Notes from the Underground

Notes from the Underground, novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in Russian as Zapiski iz podpolya in 1864. The work, which includes extremely misanthropic passages, contains the seeds of nearly all of the moral, religious, political, and social concerns that appear in Dostoyevsky’s great novels.

Written in reaction to Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s ideological novel What Is to Be Done? (1863), which offered a planned utopia based on “natural” laws of self-interest, Notes from the Underground attacks the scientism and rationalism at the heart of Chernyshevsky’s novel. The views and actions of Dostoyevsky’s underground man demonstrate that in asserting free will humans often act against self-interest. The underground man is profoundly alienated from life, entombed in his room. The hero’s views are outlined in Part I, and Part II describes the underground man’s conflicts. When he turns to reason for salvation, it fails him, and he concludes that not reason but caprice ultimately prevails in human nature.